


okay

by Anonymous



Category: Interpol (Band)
Genre: Drug Use, Love/Hate, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-24
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:00:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29490966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "I love Carlos. We all love Carlos. But I don't think he wants to see me."~ Paul Banks
Relationships: Paul Banks/Carlos Dengler
Kudos: 2
Collections: Anonymous





	okay

**Author's Note:**

> This actually happened btw i was there, i was the Chinese girl

Carlos frowned. Everything he did was calculated, so he couldn't really call it unthinking, but it definitely didn't feel like pushing the first domino. He reached out and his knuckles brushed against Paul's upper lip, only succeeding to smear the blood around beneath his nose. When he didn't feel a warning hand close around his wrist, he insistently thumbed the stain away, until the skin was clear again. He felt tiny coarse hairs beneath the pads of his fingers, reminding him of immaterial things like consequence and gender.

Paul's gaze flickered very deliberately to Carlos' mouth, and he was leaning in to brush their dry, chapped lips together, swiping his tongue over incisors before pulling back and pretending that he hadn't just done that.

He wiped the back of his mouth, brows furrowed in that familiar thinking expression.

Carlos gave an obnoxious bark of incredulous laughter. "What was that?"

Paul narrowed his eyes, in that thrilling, scathing way Carlos had delighted in coaxing out for going on years.

"Lapse in judgement," Paul deadpanned. Not for the first time, Carlos was struck by the complete discordance between Paul's face, and his voice. Paul's face and everything about him, really, apart from his infuriating self-consciousness. 

Carlos thinks that constantly worrying about the way you look is actually a form of extreme narcissism. Every moment consumed worrying about the self and how it's being presented - self obsession isn't always accompanied by a positive relationship with one's appearance.

"How long have you wanted to do that?" Carlos asked, slyly. He felt his stomach turn over when met with that poisonous glare. He was high, but it wasn't just the cocaine.

Paul seemed to realize that a new method of silencing Carlos was at his disposal, and so, with lidded feline eyes, he hooked his fingers into the spaces between the buttons of Carlos' shirt and dragged him close, licking into his mouth.

It wasn't anything to write home about. Any moral purist who claims drugs are just vehicles to escape inhibitions has no concept of the different light that coke makes you see the world in. Your reasonably attractive bandmate is now the sole object of your desire and you wouldn't even hesitate to tell him he's the most beautiful creature you've ever seen. Carlos was never a man of science but he has insider knowledge on altered brain chemistry. 

He has Paul pinned to the countertop, vaguely aware that anyone could walk in, but the thought just makes his cock harden against the jut of Paul's hips. One thumb pressed to his pulse, the other buried in his hair, forcing him to arch his back, swallowing the little panting gasps that he tries to disguise. 

"Let me fuck you," Carlos murmurs, the sound of it pushing through the gap in Paul's teeth, that cursed fucking gap that he's wanted to touch with the tip of his cock since he ever saw him crack one of those coy, teasing smiles. 

Paul tenses, turning his head. "No," he says, through gritted teeth. 

He pushes Carlos away, like the stupid, fickle bitch that he is, and the reason he's so pretty is because he may as well be a girl. Even Carlos is alarmed by the slew of vitriolic thoughts passing through his mind that make him start to suspect this whole episode can't just be blamed on the drugs. _If I wanted to make you into my little whore, then I could. If I wanted to parade you round like a lapdog, then I could, and you might be far from innocent, but that won't stop the sick things everyone wants to do to you._

He tries to marshal his features into indifference, but he knows he's a mess. "I've never been able to work out if you know what you look like," he answers, coldly. 

"Oh, I know," Paul laughs, a little manic edge to it, that shouldn't be hot, but it is, and that's almost half the problem. Carlos does not find innocence attractive; but the inner conflict, the self-hatred, the urge to punish oneself for wanting what you shouldn't. And Paul is nothing if not a walking glacier, where the tip is the face of an angel, and under the surface, there is someone capable of striking cruelty, towards himself, and towards anyone else. 

He gets it, then. Paul doesn't like being pretty. How fucking pathetic. 

"I'm going to find someone who isn't afraid of what they want," Carlos smiles, thin and cruel. 

"Yeah," Paul says blankly, wiping his mouth again, trying to scrub away the taste. "You do that."

This is a competition that Carlos will never win. While his reputation precedes him, while rumors spread both flattering and decidedly less so, the little vices that Paul indulges in are actually necessary to hide. He likes pain, whether it's giving or receiving, and Carlos wonders if sweet mom and pop ever had any idea; did he pull cat's tails, did he crush ants underfoot.

Carlos doesn't like picking up girls with him, because their eyes always glaze over with disinterest in the face of someone more interesting. He's long since come to terms with the features that compelled him to check in reflective surfaces, but Paul's effortless, awkward, quiet charm erodes away at his false and brash confidence. Thinking of it angers him. He fucks a sultry Chinese girl as hard as he wished he could fuck his bandmate, fueled by his addiction. 

Past midnight, the walls are spinning and Carlos can barely string together four words in his head, let alone marshal his tongue into the right positions for speech. He misjudged the amount of force it would take to open the door, and ends up hitting it into the wall with a reverberating crash. Something like nervous laughter spills out of his throat, before he's brought to a standstill. His eyes adjust to the dim light from the open curtains and the blue cell phone screen that hasn't been turned off. 

Paul is sitting up in bed, and his eyes are reflecting white like a cat in the dark. He doesn't move, just watches, until Carlos feels his skin start to crawl. 

"I got the wrong room," he says, with this strange, snake-like quality to it. 

"No, you didn't."

Carlos blinks, squinting into the dark, suddenly human again, blood poisoned enough to rust his sharp edges and make his limbs feel too long for his body. 

"C'mere," Paul tells him. And he finds himself doing it; obeying the excision of a gift, a command he can't even consider disobeying. 

He lets Paul slide his freezing cold fingers up against his abdomen, and curl his other arm so that Carlos' neck is supported by the crook of his elbow. 

"Did you go out?" Carlos asks, swallowing so that he can feel the tightness of Paul's hold around his neck. 

Paul doesn't answer. Instead, he says, very quietly, "This isn't a game to me." 

Carlos' rapid heart rate carries the thoughts too fast through his brain, like "this"? What's "this"? The drugs? The band? Whatever they're doing, right in this moment, with Paul's thigh wedged between his legs? He doesn't know how long he takes to respond, but before he can manage his cursory, mocking, 'okay', Paul's tucked his face into the dark hair at Carlos' nape, and he can feel his breaths even out into sleep. 

Forty minutes later, Daniel does the same thing with the door, startling the both of them. 

"Shit," he says, sounding way too sober, way too thoughtful. The three of them eye each other in the dark, two like feral cats, hackles raised. Silence stretches out. And then Daniel closes the door as gently as he can. 

They sleep through the morning and it's past noon by the time Carlos unsticks his eyelids immediately assaulted by natural light. It takes him a while to get his bearings, disoriented and sick. 

Paul winces at the sight of caked blood on his thighs, looking quickly away. He pulls the blanket up over himself but it's not as if the image isn't burned into Carlos' mind, knowing he's lost again, knowing the sheer measurement of chemicals he'd ran through his bloodstream that night was nothing, nothing in comparison.

"Care to explain that?" he asks, a little hysterically, a rough quality to his voice and a dryness in his throat. 

"You asked if I went out," Paul shrugs, and lays back down, throwing one arm over his eyes, so he doesn't have to look at Carlos' face, who stares at him in disbelief for long moments, before his frustration alchemizes into disdain. 

"You need serious help. I can pass your name on to my therapist." The sincerity behind the offer is belied by his sneer. 

Paul bares his teeth in a humourless grimace. "I can live without an audience, Carlos." He doesn't bother to move, still blocking out the sun from his eyes with his bruised forearm pressed against the bridge of his nose. "You can go now. I know you've sobered up." 

Carlos bites the inside of his cheek and almost takes a lump of meat with it. "Don't forget to warm your voice up," he says, cruelly, before sweeping out in search of the rest of his coke. The sting was taken out of the words, because his tongue struggled around them, with the pain in his cheek. 

Practice goes well. Paul doesn't turn to look at him; not even once. 


End file.
